The Zigy Wyne you never knew
Michael Kalinda alias Zigy Wyne
Kampala-He may have stirred storm in death, but 28-year-old Michael Kalinda, alias Zigy Wyne, in life was a humble and largely quiet man.
Neighbours and associates post-humously described him as affable, a teetotaller who ironically spent substantial time in a bar near his work place, playing pool.
“Zigy last came to work on Saturday (July 20) before he went missing. We were with him playing pool behind (the shops) in a bar until around midnight and went home,” said Mr Romeo Mwesigwa, who owns a movie library next to Zigy Wyne’s shop.
Zigy Wyne ran an electronics shop in Nakulabye, a Kampala suburb, where he sold and repaired phones and computers. It held an exotic name, Zigy Rasta Phones and Computer Maintenance Accessories. In reality, it was a cramped microelectronic makeshift outlet sandwiched between 40-foot containers converted into shops.
Although Opposition lawmaker Robert Kyagulanyi, aka Bobi Wine, claimed that the deceased was a member of his People Power movement, those who knew Zigy Wyne said he had scant political credentials. His closest activism was a 2017 Facebook post criticising an attempted grading of Bobi Wine’s Busabala One Love Beach.
He held out more as a political, prospecting a fortune in business and moonlighting as a land broker.
Claims that he was a musician have also turned a mirage. The first, and last time, he tried his voice and hand on music was almost a decade ago, acquaintances said.
That time he produced two songs, and an associate could only remember the one titled Malayika.
Accomplished musicians such as Mr X, who died in June 2016, and dancehall sensation Mikie Wine and his star singer Bobi Wine visited Zigy Wyne at the time at his Nakulabye outlet, according to Mr Mwesigwa.
He then made a foray into hardware business, but often spoke of his appetite to rebound to music if he mustered enough resources to meet music production costs.
He never did, but mimed his songs and often listened to them lonely, a neighbour said.
According to Mr Robert Iguru, alias Producer Inspector, who works at Fire Base headquarters, Zigy Wyne was never their employee or singer, but was a weekly visitor at their Kamwokya-based studios.
“He used to visit Fire Base every weekend and would talk to everyone about Bobi Wine music,” Mr Iguru said yesterday.
That Zigy Wyne idolised Bobi Wine is not in doubt. He exuded an aura of largesse and importance that children often gathered at his stops to receive candies.
Elsewhere, he cut a Rastafarian figure, powering noisily on a huge motorcycle whose exhaust pipe blasts rattled sleepy neighbourhoods at satanic hours.
In Gganda village of Wakiso’s Nansana Municipality, Zigy Wyne was a landlord. He had to his name a five-roomed unplastered tenement and roared home between midnight and 1am. Tenants spoke of down-to-earth property-owner, who chatted and shared meals with them.
On the fateful day, July 21, a house help to one of tenants said Zigy Wyne did his own laundry and chewed sugarcane before removing the clothes from the drying line and setting off.
They expected him back by midnight, his usual arrival time. He didn’t. And nothing seemed ominous. Then he was not seen on the second and third day. This was unusual.
“We wondered where Zigy was, we had not seen him or heard the sound of his motorbike because it was loud and one could tell that he has come back,” said Ms Jane Kyogabirwe, one of the tenants.
Anxiety turned into panic and dread when Zigy Wine’s wife who lives in Nairobi, Kenya, placed a distress call to one of the tenants to inquire his whereabouts after her telephone calls to him went answered.
ALSO READ:Zigy Wyne laid to rest in Mitooma
According to Irene Nakakande, a wife to Zigy Wyne’s close friend and neighbour Samson Drasiku, some tenants inquired if her husband knew the whereabouts of their landlord.
Mr Drasiku is a mason who built Zigy Wyne’s house in Nansana.
Concerned, he and some of the tenants at 10pm on July 27 reached out to police at Gganda post to report a case of a missing person. This was a week after Zigy Wyne disappeared.
Police visited his home the next day, on Sunday, and cut open the padlock to satisfy themselves that he was not inside. The detectives promised to liaise with counterparts in Kampala Metropolitan area and update the anxious tenants and neighbours. They never did.
Mr Drasiku and Zigy Wyne’s wife, Ms Hilda decided to check if he was at the family’s home in Bukoto, where he had been called for a meeting on the fateful day. He wasn’t. News filtered that he had been found unconscious at Mulago hospital.
What happened to him remains contested, but his condition deteriorated and he died last Sunday.
Additional reporting by Andrew Bagala
